Some of you might have known that I’ve been volunteering at Startup Weekend Hong Kong since April this year, and this Fashion Edition was the first one I had fully participated in. Also, it was probably the hastiest edition we have done for Startup Weekend so far. When our Techstars’ superhero Matthieu Bodin asked me if I was interested to organise Startup Weekend Fashion Edition that cooperated with the Global Fashion Battle in September, I immediately said YES. However, we didn’t start preparing for this event since everyone was busy for their own job until the beginning of November we had our first organising team meeting, and after that we drove like crazy for getting judges and mentors on board in order to get our event launched in 10 days.
WHAT’S STARTUP WEEKEND FASHION? – Startup weekend is a 54-hour weekend event, during which groups of entrepreneurs, developers and designers pitch their business ideas, form their teams, work on their prototypes and present to a panel of judges by the end of the weekend. The purpose of this Fashion Edition was to bring fashion and tech lovers to work together to build something innovative that might change the future of fashion. For a fashion startup – it could be a fashion related tech platform, an eco-friendly label, wearable technology fashion or an innovative way of doing fashion business. This edition has been such a success not just because we got people to rethink about fashion, but also motivated them to brainstorm more about how technology can contribute to this industry. Many startups die not because the ideas are not good enough. Ideas are cheap, they are anywhere, but a good business idea should resolve a special problem that exists in the market. I’ve been in this startup Hong Kong community quite a little while. I’ve seen so many startups that based on the ideas to address the problems they created for using their platform/ services sake, means that this kind of startups are not resolving the real problems people have, but creating new problems by themselves and expecting people would use their resolutions. People only look for a solution when they’re facing some specific problems, but not getting the solutions first and start looking for the problems. If a startup does not exist for the market needs, then it’s meant to die sooner or later.
My main duties for this edition included venues seeking, getting judges and mentors, T-shirt design & printing, social media marketing & content writing as well as photography during the whole event. Thanks everyone for coming to this event, especially all of the judges and mentors who made time coming and supporting our event and giving advice to our participants. Last but not least, thanks to our dream organising team, especially Cynthia Cheung and Stef Lau these two rocking stars and other teammates’ contribution. A great team is the key for running a successful startup, and it also applies to everything.
Stay tuned for our other editions, and more Mannequin Challenges! – LOVE from SWHK FASHION CREW xx